


Existence

by Jadedphase



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-17
Updated: 2014-07-17
Packaged: 2018-02-09 06:44:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1972875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jadedphase/pseuds/Jadedphase
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'Raven grabbed his hand and pressed it to the wall next to her own, amused by the difference in the length and width in comparison, then did the same with Monty's; the three prints like some proclamation that proved that they not only existed in the world but they were bold enough to see what it had to offer. '</p>
            </blockquote>





	Existence

"If we do this and mess it up we're probably going to die."

She stood staring upward, the words voiced between lips slightly pursed and wearing a faint furrow to her brow born of contemplation and weight while she studied the object of opposite in her path.

"If we do this and Clarke finds out we're really going to die," she added, shrugging the threadworm bag higher on her shoulder from where it had slipped lower with the seconds of pause.

But if any of that really bothered Raven it didn't show, if anything her scrutiny was more to judge the best way to go about the idea more than debating if it was wise or not.

Of course it was a good idea; it was one she had come up with.

"And then nobody will be there to protect the camp," Monty chimed in with a flicker of sarcasm from his spot next to her, sharing her skyward gaze with a hint more debate to his expression; he was weighing his options carefully.

 

The last of the trio, busy at the time with tugging his sneaker out of the tangle of roots a misplaced step had planted it firmly into, added; "Bellamy will."

The words earned an easy roll of eyes from Monty and then a slow turn of his head to follow the arch of motion as Jasper jerked too hard on that sneaker and the roots snapped, pitching the gangly youth off to one side and into the brush with an undignified yelp of surprise.

"You have to bring up your hero worship into everything," Monty mock-chided while he offered a hand to help his friend haul out of the bramble, stepping back when Jasper shook his head to shed bits of sticks and leaves in a rustled shower.

"What's that supposed to mean?" He demanded, tugging at a stubborn twig that refused to let go easily.

Ever the picture of calm, Monty leaned up and gave the twig a quick jerk that freed it from Jasper's dirty hair with only a few strands lost in the process, "It means you have a crush on our brooding leader."

"Shut up man! I do not!"

Even Raven paused in her steps to give Jasper a bemused look for the outburst and he huffed at the both of them with all the indigence he could muster, even if it was bound to be short-lived.

"You're just jealous" he countered, shoving both hands deep into the pockets of his gritty jeans, rocking back and forth on his restless heels.

"Of Bellamy?" Monty's humored look only grew more so and he tossed the broken twig aside, "Why would I be jealous of Bellamy when the guy only knows how to think with his gun."

"You're the one talking about his gun and saying I'm the one with the crush?"

"Boys!"

Raven knew her plans were fast dissolving while the two of them went back and forth with the conversation; they could have been at it all day and then nothing would have gotten accomplished.  
And that was why she had to be there to keep them on track; smart as they were the simple act of putting them together for any amount of time was bound to lead to some venture into the little world they shared and didn't often bother to explain to outsiders.

 

It wasn't entirely a very adult place, as she had noticed; an endearing fact but one that hindered more than helped when it came to staying focused. And she had plans that day so they would have to play later.

"We're on a mission here, right?"

"Right." They mirrored each other with the answer and Jasper's head bobbed in an exuberant nod as well until he looked back upward at the looming giant above them and voiced what they were all thinking; "But how do we get up there?"

The 'there' in question rising high above them, a grouping of two oak trees that had grown wild and unhindered for long years, tangled themselves together and woven around with thick vines that had taken hold and crept over them until branches and trunks alike were impossibly snaked around with the heavy greenery.

And the prize mostly buried within those tangles was one Raven had spotted days before; a nearly ancient passenger plane that must have clipped the trees long ago, a large chunk of it had sank in amid the branches and remained there; sheltered and mostly cradled from the years of decaying rain and scorching sunlight.

 

The once silver and white outer shell had taken on the musty brown of age and rust but that did nothing to dampen her spirits; there could have been all manner of useful items hidden away inside the remains of that elderly giant.

"I'm still trying to figure out why we're going up there in the first place," Jasper admitted in what was, for him, a rare moment of pause rather than excited rush at the prospects of a new adventure.

Raven was happy to explain, as she hadn't told them much beyond that she needed their help and promised it would be an interesting day; enough to spark the curiosity it took to draw Monty out of the camp and hold Jasper's attention for very long.

By the looks of the climb ahead of them interesting may have been a tame word for it.

"Because if we get up there and there's anything left from the crash it might still be in one piece, there could be wires and maybe even electronics that I can use to patch our communications systems or even some of the panels that were damaged on the drop ship when we landed."

"And new parts for the still," Monty added, having the sneaking suspicion that might do more to motivated Jasper, "And it means we have something to do all day besides gather food and firewood."

"Okay, but it's still all the way up there," Jasper pointed out as he stared upward, tracing the lines of those vines with his gaze until he grew dizzy trying to sort out where they crossed each other and curled into matted bunches.

"So we'll climb up."

Raven had already dumped the bag out onto the mossy ground as she spoke, digging a coil of rope free from the mass of it to hook in her belt and looping it to be sure it wouldn't snag on the way up.

 

"Don't worry boys, ladies first." She wore the smirk on her lips in such a way that it seemed like the most natural expression in the world resting there.

And then she was off the ground, limber legs pushing her upward and hands digging into the rough bark as she grabbed hold of branches and scaled her way along the trunk, higher and higher into the thick foliage, weaving her way through the tangles of leaves and vines.

She moved with certainty and confidence, using her shoulder to shove aside branches in the way as she climbed higher, until it was easier for them to see the rustle of the branches around her than it was to make out Raven's form among them.

"She's totally showing you up," Jasper tipped his head while he watched her, admiring the way she moved with such ease and control through that living, growing maze.

"You're on the ground too."

Monty had already hooked another bunch of the ropes to his belt and begun the slow climb himself when he called back down to him, a taunting tone to the words as he left him behind.

Rather than waste his breath, Jasper scrambled to catch up, snatching up the last of the ropes and bounding to the base of the tree; throwing himself into the task with his usual determination.

Even that wasn't quite enough to match pace with her though, Raven had learned from the past how to navigate her way through ducts and narrow spaces, to find a path through the complicated working of the engineering floor; in comparison Monty and Jasper were easily left in her wake.  
Though to his credit Jasper did gain enough ground to pass Monty, perhaps more because the other's height and lack of the gangly build Jasper possessed; or it could have been just as much the fact that the taller teen was difficult to slow down once he launched into motion.

Once he had bypassed Monty Jasper paused, one leg thrown over a branch and hands stretched above his head to hold to another and keep his balance when he leaned to flash a grin downward; "Now whose failing behind?"

"Of course you can climb, you're part praying mantis," Monty retorted with a measured effort to pull up across a gap between the vines, twisting his way around the unyielding overgrowth. There was something to be said for a steady focus when it came to finding the otherwise unnoticed handholds.

"What?"

Raven was nearly to their goal when the conversation between the two tripped her up, making her grab for a vine to balance herself and look downward where Jasper was shaking his head and biting back an indulgent smile that took up most of his so often expressive visage.

"Don't ask."

 

And she didn't, right that moment, but once they were back on the ground the question was bound to come back around; that curiosity would need to be satisfied.

"Wait until we get up there too," Monty cautioned once she had reached the bottom edge of the ruined plane, still a few feet above himself and Jasper and out of reach.

But by then Raven had already crept her way back and forth, finding holes and hooks in the metal to attach her ropes and ducking back to secure them to thicker branches and tree trunks; weaving a web slowly to add more security to the already firmly situated wreckage.

Age had taken a toil on the crash, how many years exactly none of them could guess, but the groaning and grinding of steel under that new strain of Raven's efforts to tie off the weak spots made Monty cringe and urged Jasper into a faster pace, scrambling his way upward to perch near where she lingered knotting a rope to the trunk.

"Took you a while," Raven teased and caught the end of the rope he unwound from his belt and tossed to her, holding it steady while Jasper ducked his way around the wreckage to the opposite side to mirror her previous efforts.

Once Monty reached them there was only the front of the broken craft to tie off, and by the time the three of them had finished the entire mess of busted metal was netted together with vines and rope, still left swaying slightly in the heavier breezes as the trees shifted under them.

Raven hauled up over the edge of the back of the wreckage, into the open space inside, her shoes stirring up dust undisturbed for long years and she watched it swirl around her ankles with all the memories of those decades that would hold secrets she would never be able to learn as they were whisked away on the breeze.

She smiled, fingers trailing along the walls of the cabin, imprinting her mark on the past in the form of smudges in the grime; once pressing her palm into that layer to leave behind a single, perfect hand-print.

 

The clang and groan of added weight on the structure alerted her that Monty and Jasper had joined her, the former glancing around the space with curious caution and placing his feet along the path she had left behind while the latter darted along in uneven circles as he studied whatever caught his eye at the time and quickly caught up with her.

Raven grabbed his hand and pressed it to the wall next to her own, amused by the difference in the length and width in comparison, then did the same with Monty's; the three prints like some proclamation that proved that they not only existed in the world but they were bold enough to see what it had to offer.

"It's like being the first people in the world," she mused before, finally, she drew away from the wall to see what treasures their discovery held.

And it certainly felt that they were, that they had stepped into some place that the ground had not claimed and the chaos could not reach; only the shimmer of light between the cracks in the metal and the dusty air dancing around them stood witness to the newcomers in that undisturbed place.

Beyond those thin walls the world continued to turn but for a moment they were sheltered from it, no more a part of that place than the Ark high above them was of the Earth below.

More than any of the trio really grasped in the moment, they were free of everything but the subtle secrets of that place and each other.

 

They spread out just enough to cover the space half filled with broken seats and busted compartments, even the hang of plastic hoses that had long past lost to decay the masks once attached to them.  
Once, when it had been part of a world where it still had a purpose, that massive structure had held ferried busy travelers to their destination carried like a bird in the skies,finally left forever grounded when something in that world fell apart and its' use faded into obscurity.

It had suffered a violent sort of death, a drop from the sky that had torn it apart; maybe that was the fate much of the world had suffered in those explosive final days. The wounds still only partly healed and the violence only barely calmed since then.

Raven nearly touched one of the belts still buckled tightly in a seat, fingertips almost brushing the thick piled layer of dust it was buried amid. When she realized that in doing would have been upsetting a grave from a time long before her birth she drew back, not wanting to disturb with her curiosity whatever spirit claimed that resting spot.

Jasper had made his way to a window and smeared away the dust with his palm, the clean space casting a wide arch of light into the area as he stared out at the shattered chunk of a wing sheared off by the crash into those trees. As the dust danced in the amber light they were all drawn to it and the glint it cast here and there amid the wreckage.

 

"I wonder what happened," he voiced as he stepped away, gazing back at the opening they had climbed through, "The rest of it must have ended up on the ground."

Where it had no doubt been tore into bits by the forest of scavengers until there was nothing left but the memory of the rest of that plane, memories that were buried into the soil and belonged to the world it had once been part of.

"It must have been huge, this is only the front half," Monty speculated, trying to fathom the idea of something smaller than the Ark stations but so very much larger than himself.

"Boys, always trying to compare sizes," Raven chided with a playful tone to bring the three of them out of the hypnotic spell of those thoughts in that nearly surreal place.

"It's hard to think that this used to be part of the world down here, probably still in the days when the Ark had just launched.

They shared the same time and the same world, for just a little while."

Her words caught Monty and sent him pacing slowly amid the busted seats, trying to dredge up in his mind's eye the two ideas woven together; the sky above and the world below for that so very short time before everything below had collapsed.

 

The lofty notions were scattered like the particles of rust with the sudden clang of sound that made both of them jump and turn sharply towards it, where Jasper stood amid the contents of an overhead compartment he had found still intact and had fought to open until the rusty latch had finally snapped; spilling everything inside onto the floor at his feet.

"You broke it," Monty laughed weakly, his chest still thumping a bit from the surprise he managed to swallow down, "Now you see why he's not allowed to mess with things in the drop ship."

"Hey! I didn't break anything" Jasper defended himself, the irritation only offered in jesting banter between them. "I could fix most things on that ship, thanks."

"But I guess if we wanted to grow a garden in here," he trailed off with a smirk and even Monty couldn't help but laugh.

The ease between them was something Raven envied; she had only begun to unravel the both of them in the short time she'd known them and sneak a peek into that private world they shared but selfishly she wanted to understand it better. To be a part of it herself, if they would allow it; that place where friendship tied them together without excuse or any need to explain.

"What did you find?" She questioned while Jasper crouched to sort out the contents on the ground, pulling his goggles down over his eyes to keep the dust displaced in his search from his eyes.

"Junk mostly," he admitted, "old clothes, most of them are rotten though."

He tossed aside clothing that had fallen victim to the ravages of time, pausing to hold up what had once been a shirt of an intense yellow dotted with large red flowers; the splatters of mold and holes in it did very little to damper how truly horrible it was.

"Wow."

There really wasn't anything more to say about it, Monty had managed to sum it up in a single word and that shared laughter returned to fill the small space.

 

"Hey, look at this," Jasper climbed over the seat with a handful of papers, holding them out once he reached Monty and Raven. What they turned out to be wasn't papers at all but old photos, color Polaroids stuffed into a plastic album that had shielded them like a glossy tomb from the rolling decay all around other than thin water lines that caused the images to curl at the edges.

The photos tumbled out of the plastic and he caught most of them, the ones that slipped through his fingers were rescued before they fluttered too far towards the ground, gathered between Raven and Monty; images captured on the delicate surface slick under their dusty grasp.

Many of them were only recounts of places that no longer existed; parks and towering buildings, crowds of people long in their graves, monuments that had crumbled to dust. But seeing them captured on that aged paper was like staring into a past they had only known in history lessons. Stories that paled in comparison and fell short of showing the life to the idea.

There it was in faded color; a place where people once walked sidewalks and took vacations, where life was cradled enough in progress to be comfortable and the luxury of escaping without any fear of losing what you left behind was so very real and only an east step away. A place where people had sought escape from normality rather than danger, idle comforts instead of necessity.

There were shots of funny poses in front of serious places and images of lazy moments on the sand; parties and drinks and family. The amount of family was almost too much to fathom in their world of being alone from birth; siblings and aunts and uncles in what must have been an ancestry tree that spread out as wide and as thick as the one that had sheltered those pictures for so long. A world where a single family line uncurled in a dozen directions rather than short jolts in thin generations.

There was a flicker of longing that edged over each of them at the realization; a feeling of being robbed by the confines of space kinship and warm reunions, cousins and siblings to grow with, aunts and uncles, the full sum of a life less solitary than people were meant to live.

 

"Did you guys ever want a sister or brother?" Raven couldn't help asking, wondering if she was alone in that wishful thinking that it might have nice to share a family rather than carry one all on your own shoulders.

Jasper shrugged as he sifted from one picture to the next, "I've always had a brother."

And he had, Raven supposed, unable to help smiling before she returned her gaze back to those time-worn images.

 

The people in the pictures were clean and so different, they had lived in a world of pleasant excess and their expressions were joyful rather than weighed down down by survival. They wore the garb of sunny days, close-cropped shorts and t-shirts that weren't as thin with age and sporting logos that were only relics without the towering empires they had once represented.

It was the strangest thing to see, the easiest to envy.

"They look so happy," Raven remarked as they looked through the pictures and spied on those lives that no long existed. "They had so much, I wonder if they even knew it."

Jasper studied one of the photos of a small group gathered around the shores of an ocean smiling and laughing,"People are going to say the same thing about us some day."

It was a sobering thought; that there would be a day in the distant future when the lives they felt were such a struggle would be something to look back on with envy. Maybe not for the struggle itself but for what it would mean, for the world they were building and what they were creating by being the first ones to pave the path from the sky to the earth below.

"Let's see what's left in the cockpit." Raven urged when she could feel the silence stretch out thick around them and handed the photos back to Jasper, watching him gather them and tuck them back into the album carefully before he slid them into a pocket to safeguard; the others would want to see them once they got back to camp and they were too important to risk being lost if they were left behind.

 

The progress to the cockpit was more complicated, the narrow space was filled with the clutter of upset carts and metal boxes, it took Jasper clambering over and pushing things aside to clear the path but he did it eagerly; after the discovery in the cabin of the plane he expected even more to be waiting for them in that last space.

Raven and Monty made the climb more slowly, working their way around the edges of rusty metal rather than right over them, sliding along the walls and dropping to the opposite side of the clutter where the door had swung half open and stuck there. And after a moment of pushing the metal protested with a low sound and scraped free, revealing a surprising flash of sunlight and a breeze of air.

There was barely anything left, the windows smashed out and heavy limbs having grown through the open spaces until they continued their reach upward, locking the cockpit into the body of the trees. The elements had seeped into the spaces left between, moss thick and pale green covered the floor and broken bits of glass and electronics alike, having taken back with a wave of greenery what had once been unnatural. Nature had turned the space into a strange sort of cave of metal and organic twined together.

 

"Nothing left here," Raven's brow furrowed at the sight; as pretty as it was dotted with tiny white flowers and alive with green that hand of nature had ruined everything useful in the cockpit and buried it in that gentle grave.

"I guess that answers that question," Monty walked in amid the moss, feeling the bounce of it under his sneakers and the rustle of the limbs shifted around by the weight as he stepped around them. "But it is pretty amazing."  
His palm skirted the bark of one of the thickest limbs, feeling the tiny bumps and dips in the surface rough under his touch.

The world had taken back something else that man had made, it had not fully won the battle yet but was making slow progress in winning and consuming that relic of the human race.

While he was lost in his thoughts and Jasper had crept out to the edge of that platform, peering downward at the height they were perched and Raven moved past them, catching their attention when she took hold of the edge of the broken window and pulled herself upward and out, planting her feet on the edge as she crawled up to stand at the very top of the plane, turning all around to take in the sights she could see for miles.

 

"You should see the view from up here," her voice carried out through the air like a challenge.

One that proved impossible to ignore; Jasper grinned and moved after her; his was more a gathering and uncoiling of coltish limbs than her graceful motions but got the job done as he jumped up and pulled himself onto the roof, dragging into a crouch and then a disjointed pile of himself sitting atop the curved roof.

"Come on Monty!" Jasper called out and leaned forward when Monty followed, giving him a hand up to join them, the two flopping down to sit side by side in the shards of sunlight peeking through the leaves.

 

Raven stood, head tipped back and hands lifted above her as she stretched, soaking up that warmth and the unhindered, fresh air at what felt like the top of the world right about then; all the troubles a million miles below them on that battled-scarred ground. She took it in, hand curved above her eyes to shield them while she spied forests and distant mountains, rivers curving throughout it all like a ribbon tying the world together.

"I always wanted a tree house." Jasper mused, palms dropped to the metal and leaning back on them,  
eyes trailing the horizon.

Monty offered only a vague shrug to the words, "I always just wanted a tree."

Laughing, she closed the small space between herself and them, coming to rest sitting between the two and finding herself a spot there where they moved enough to give her room.

 

The sunlight warmed the three of them nearly as much as the presence of each other, something comforting in the idea of having that afternoon above their troubles; Raven rested her shoulders in against Monty's and tossed her legs across Jasper's in a sprawl of eased laziness after all the activity in reaching that perch.  
But worth it, even without too much found in the wreckage; getting there had been more worthwhile than any bunch of ancient wires or old electronics might have been.

The peaceful lull curled around the trio, silence that didn't feel so much empty as it was content, but not really bound to last too long.

"We're not going to tell mom and dad about this, are we?" Monty finally spoke, turning his gaze away from the sky and back to the other two.

Puzzled, Raven had to ask; "who?"

"Oh," Jasper lifted his head from studying a bug crawling along the edge of his sneaker, realizing that Raven must not have been aware of that joke around the camp, "Clarke and Bellamy."

The answer sent her into a fit of laughter and she couldn't resist elbowing him lightly in the ribs; "That makes your crush on Bellamy so much creepier."

"Those Blakes though, huh? They must have some weird pheromones going on." she added with another light ring of humor.

"I don't see it." Monty threw his opinion in and the other two both turned to him for a lingering moment, "What?"

"Not even Octavia?" Raven prodded, "that girl is crazy but she's gorgeous."

When they both looked at her, Jasper in nodding agreement and Monty with a bemused expression tugging at his lips she only lifted her hand in a dismissive, unconcerned sort of gesture.

"It's okay Jasper," she flashed him a smirking grin with the words, "I don't know about Octavia but I think you can have Bellamy all to yourself unless Clarke gets mad about it."

"Why do I even go anywhere with you two?" Jasper's exasperated tone only barely carried over the spill of Monty's laughter and he would have elbowed him if not for Raven being in the way between them.

 

But she moved when she was nudged and Monty finally sported a smirk of his own, reaching out to catch Jasper by the chin and pull him close enough to press a quick kiss to his lips as though to answer that question.  
And as it drew out from swift apology to lingering press of lips together affectionately Jasper sighed and that line of tension to his shoulders melted into nothing, a relaxed slump. When he felt another set of fingers run through his hair in a toying, flexing touch that tipped his head back once Monty had edged away and Raven stole his lips instead for just as long.

Once he was free again Jasper's kept that breathy smile left behind; "Oh, yeah; that."

"That," Raven agreed, giving them both a nudge here and a shift there to sink into the spot between them again, dropping her shoulders to Monty's chest and tipping her head back against the shoulder Jasper had settled in against his best friend's side.  
She knew without having to look that Jasper had dropped his chin to the top of Monty's hair and she reached to grab one each of both of their wrists to pull around in front of her and make a tangle of their hands all together.

 

They sat there, relaxing as she wove her fingers around and through theirs', smiling now and then when she studied the different hues their skin all made against each other and the traces of dirt here and there that seemed to tie those hues together in some common way.

They were such odd boys, unhindered and curious, and more important than that they were, in some way and for those days, her boys.

That seemed to suit them just fine; being able to keep each other and her measured chaos as well; there was a balance to it all, something in each that supported the others.  
How it should have been,wit and wisdom and impulsive energy; they were better together than they could have been alone.

Monty's chin had dipped some and she could feel the weight of Jasper's arm growing heavy as that lethargic haze crept over them all and the sun made its' slow trail across the late afternoon cloudy skies.

They would have to leave soon, to return back to obligations and fewer moments just for the three of them, but that was unavoidable, only evadable now and then.

 

"Better enjoy the view now, getting back down is going to be fun," she mused and stretched, threading her arms up between them and hooking her arms around both of them, fingers tracing over the bare back of their necks down to where her hands were interrupted by fabric.  
She felt a tiny flicker of shiver from one of them with the slide of her hands but they were settled too close together for her to tell which.

"We have very different ideas of what fun is." Monty pointed out and tipped his head some when she mussed up the smooth surface of his dark hair into spiky waves with a teasing motion.

Jasper's palms had dropped to the mental, propping himself into that sitting position; "I'd rather stay here," he confessed with a sigh.

"Unless we're going to start eating pinecones I doubt that would work for too long," Raven pointed out and Monty groaned at the comment and the memories associated with it.

 

Eat one pinecone in a hallucinogenic haze and never live it down; Earth was such an unforgiving place.

 

"But we can come back," she added, "the next time we get a break from everything at camp."

The silent agreement was enough to satisfy them for the moment; knowing there would be, waiting for them, that quiet place above all their troubles. It had been there for nearly a hundred years already so days or weeks longer wouldn't cause that secluded spot to disappear.

They spent a few more moments there, in the company of each other with the miles of forest spread out at their feet like a lush carpet and feeling that, for a short amount of precious time, the world was made just for the three of them.

 

It felt like, really, truly, being the best sort of alive.


End file.
